Books: General with Imagination

THE GENERAL WHO MARCHED TO HELL (349 pp.)Earl Schenck MiersKnopf
($4.50).

GENERAL WILLIAM T. SHERMAN INSANE.

The headlined scandal broke on Dec. 11, 1861, in the columns of the
Cincinnati Commercial. A dispatch explained: "He was . . . while
commanding in Kentucky, stark mad . . . He has of course been relieved
altogether from command."

Hostile journalists actually thought they had evidence of Sherman's
insanity. In the midst of a slow, steady advance toward the Cumberland
Gap, the report went, Sherman began to imagine shadowy Confederate
cavalrymen in the obscure offing. He ordered a halt, then pulled back
in alarm, all quite...